(no subject)

[chess]

I've been finding out lately that a disturbing number of you are conservatives/Tory supporters of some stripe or another. Being somewhat of a flaming red socialist myself, I'm interested in how you guys justify the belief that the rich ought to get richer and the poor ought to fend for themselves that seems to be the Tory standpoint to me...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

All this talk of Blair 'betraying' people by not being socialist enough is amusing. Blair was only elected with the landslide he had because he proved to the electorate's satisfaction that a Labour government led by him would not be socialist (admittedly most of the vote was anti-Tory, but if he hadn't been acceptable, that is, non-socialist, he might still have won but he'd have been in a much weaker position). The true betrayal of the country would have been to swing to the left: that would have been getting elected on flase principles.

I'd love to see the true-red Labourites get rid of Blzair, install a truly socialist leader... and find themselves unelectable again for a generation, just like the 80s. I suspect even Gordon Brown is a poisoned chalice, as he has been set up so sucessfully as 'the Anti-Blair' that he is associated in the public's mind with old socialist Labour, so he'd have to redo all Blair's work of convincing the public he wasn't really a socialist before they'd elect him, rather than being able to continue Blair's success in making Labour, rather than the Conservatives, the party of generally sane economic policies.

At the moment Blair has lost all the respect I had for him over Iraq with this anti-hunting bill that is pure and simple pandering to the old guard class warriors. For a while there I thought he had principles; I thought that he was willing to do the right thing even if it was unpopular. But now the old focus-group Blair has come back.